School job losses help stymie Oregon's economic recovery

Torsten Kjellstrand/The OregonianCrowded schools and classrooms are one impact of education job losses. Another is a drag on Oregon's economic recovery, economists say.

While Oregon's private companies have been adding workers and giving the state's sputtering economy a bit of a boost, government has been shedding jobs by the thousands, dashing any hope of a robust recovery, state economists say.

Nowhere is that public employment downturn more apparent than in the K-12 school system, which has taken the brunt of the cuts. The effects will be clear this week as students, teachers and staff return to classrooms: Bigger class sizes, fewer offerings and, in many cases, reduced or frozen pay and a shakier sense of job security.

Consider the 12 months between July 2010 and July 2011. Private sector jobs grew by more than 25,000. Federal government offices in Oregon lost 3,200 workers. Universities, with record enrollment and the ability to increase tuition, added more than 1,000 new workers. But K-12 schools? They lost more than 3,700 jobs, according to the Oregon Employment Department. This school year, another 4,000 Oregon school jobs are expected to go away.

Being a teacher, custodian, instructional assistant or school administrator has become one of the riskiest jobs -- in terms of longevity -- in Oregon.

"It's really difficult for anyone, regardless of how long they've worked in schools, to feel confident they'll still have a job next year," said Tricia Smith, longtime Salem lobbyist for the Oregon School Employees Association, the union that represents non-teaching school employees. "I think it's shameful."

Since their peak employment level in 2008, Oregon's public schools have lost about 6,500 jobs, said Mark McMullen, the interim state economist. "When the dust settles after this fall, we figure the total will be over 10,000 workers."

Those losses, he said, and the moribund housing industry are causing a "headwind" that is preventing the state's economy from achieving the full-throated recovery that typically follows a recession -- the kind of rebound that in the past sent state revenues soaring.

Job cuts also take a personal toll, financially and emotionally. Renee Saint-Amour had nine years teaching experience, including the last three years at the alternative Clackamas Middle College, in the North Clackamas School District, when she was laid off this year from her $47,000-a-year job.

"It's devastating," said Saint-Amour, 39, who lives in Northeast Portland and taught high school English. "There's so much uncertainty."

Being laid off not only threw her household finances into a tailspin -- she's married with a working husband and a 2-year-old son -- it also bewildered her students. "They said, 'You're a good teacher. Why would they cut you?'"

State lawmakers budgeted $5.7 billion for schools for the 2011-13 biennium, an amount equal to the previous two years but nowhere near enough to cover the rising cost of retirement pensions, health care, payroll and general inflation. The result was multi-million dollar shortfalls at districts around the state.

Job losses differ from district to district. Some spent deeply into their reserve funds to preserve teaching positions, some cut the number of school days to hang onto staff. Portland, the state's biggest district, lost 82 positions. Among the hardest hit were Salem-Keizer, which is expected to lose more than 200 positions this academic year and North Clackamas, which lost more than 100 positions.

"You got Republicans and Democrats talking about job creation," said Greg Parrington, vice president of the North Clackamas teachers union. "All we've been doing is losing middle class jobs."

Rob Kremer, treasurer for the state Republican Party and president of the school-choice group Oregon Education Coalition, said any job losses, public or private, can hurt the economy. But reality is reality, he said.

"The fact is, we couldn't sustain the level of spending government found itself in," Kremer said. Had the state done more to rein in retirement costs, he said, it could have avoided thousands of teacher layoffs.

Oregon is following a national trend, according to the U.S. Census. State and local governments across the country cut more than 200,000 jobs in 2010, the Census reported last week. Educators make up a majority of those jobs.

For a variety of reasons, schools become a prime target when states have to trim budgets. They often are the biggest single item in the state. And in the teeth of a recession, it becomes difficult for school advocates to argue for more money when they're up against crippling cuts to overloaded social programs, such as food stamps and Medicaid.

"Demands on those programs just grow, grow, grow," said Chuck Bennett, with the Confederation of Oregon School Administrators, which lobbies for higher state spending on K-12 districts. "So what do we say? Yes, we think there will be real impacts. They're saying back, 'Look, is anybody going to die? Go hungry?' These are tough questions."

Gov. John Kitzhaber, a Democrat, is scheduled to give a "state of the schools" talk Tuesday in Springfield to outline how he plans to make Oregon's schools better despite the money problems. His spokesman, Tim Raphael, said the state set a "stable funding floor" for schools that the governor hopes to build on. "There is no painless way to make up for a $3.5 billion shortfall, which is the situation we found ourselves in this biennium," Raphael said. "The governor is optimistic that we will weather this economic uncertainty and will come out stronger together."

Time, however, isn't on the side of Saint-Amour, the laid-off English teacher. She said she thinks the time has come to switch careers.

"And that breaks my heart," she said. "I love being in the classroom."